Affiliate Association Question

[Mogga]

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I again have problems with overture & google working against my unique content.

Will the affiliate association support unique sites or be on the site where there is obviously money to be made?


Should the affiliate association support unique content sites?

[NetNeo]

Hi,
I have been reading quite a few threads on this, excuse me for being a bit slow, but I dont understand how this works! (Espotting thingy)
I have noticed that I have many pages on these "search listing sites" how do I know if they are losing me money?
If I understood I would look for ways to combat it.
New to this epsotting feed thing so really dont understand

[Mogga]

If espots etc have trawled your site then it'll appear on the millions of sites which use their data to make sites of sites (Sound complicated?)

That means your phrases, titles, words, etc appear on their sites.

Sadly google stinks regards this and thinks these sites are "good" and so will list them higher than your own site. Meaning people will get to see the espots listing site before your site.

(They're often massive and will have link systems which set up good inward bound link stuff to their own pages too even though they offer nothing unique)

Therefore if you're listing well on espotts the other sites get the traffic that otherwise would be yours. You get probably a miniscule proportion of traffic BUT even so its always poorer traffic (IMO) because they've already been washed with ads and espots sponsered listings.

EG:

You have a site about Clouds for sale.

Your site gets trawled by espots and now appears on a site called "region of custard" on its clouds for sale listings (Of which it might have pages made specificlaly for "big clouds for sale", "green clouds for sale", "orange clouds for sale" etc etc BEFORE they get to your site in their list they'll have the espotss "cloud merchants" ppc ads which will take away people looking to buy clouds for sale
Then eventually someone will make it past the ads (and banner ads etc) and see the non-ppc listings inclduing your site for sale.

They make money through banner ads and rev share on the ppc ads clicked on by people who might well have come directly to your site from a real search engine.

I think its an abuse. I get nothing for having my site and unique content used by espots etc.

If you get referrals form sites which you don't recog as search engines and lots less searches from google then you have been affected by this & chances are you will lose revenue.

[drivetowin]

Mogga

I'm having to play real devils advocate on this one.

On the one hand I can see where you're coming from - I (and I'm sure many of us with unique content sites) have suffered/am suffering from this problem and agree with you that it is really frustrating.

On the other hand, there are a large number of members of this forum (who will hopefully in time become members of the association) who make substantial revenues from espotting and would not be at all happy at the idea of that being taken away - indeed I must admit that I use espotting results to fill domains that I hold but am not yet ready to develop fully and they do provide a useful source of income from what would otherwise be a liability rather than an asset.

I think the real problem here lies not with the espotting sites per se but with the way Google looks at those sites - so I guess it is to Google that any protest should be mounted - but whether we (even as an association) will be able to get Google to change the way they work - only time will tell.

A very good thread though and I will be very interested to hear others thoughts. I will certainly add this topic to the agenda for our 'hearts and minds' meeting at the end of June.

[Mogga]

Devils advocate back to you.

Can I stop espots etc trawling my site?

[Rich]

My feeling on this is pages of search results will tend to rank well as they contain high keyword densities - this is the reason Kelkoo pages used to show up highly for product queries. Google seem to have corrected that a bit and I expect the same will happen with these types of sites.

I don't think this would be a something for an affiliate association to get involved with as a lot of companies involved in producing webpages containing search results would never class them sell as affiliates (e.g. dogpile) - I think one thing an association would have to be careful of is placing restrictions on members that would mean they would just be replaced by non members.

By the way Mogga, you might want to check the Google cache of that site you've highlighted recently.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

I might be off topic, just trying grasp the focus of this thread.

Is the quality of the site or ads any different than those sites with Google Adsense on them? Are the quality of those contextual ads any more relevant. Can the same be said for any site that has overture, mirago, espotting or google adsense for income revenue purposes..but even if you build content around it... Its duplicate content.

There are half a dozen dvd merchants, including amazon, who purchase their dvd product database from the same company, usually given away by the synopsis...is this duplicate content? Should they get indexed?

Are we in a roundabout way talking about duplicated content? Is not using a purely a merchants product feed duplicate content? Unless of course you build additional content around these forms income generation...you have to monetise somehow on the page to produce income - but there is still duplicate content.

But, who can claim to be the judge & jury of quality content? Quality content is subjective, it may qualify in the eyes of one but not in anothers. Is quality based on because a site looks pretty or the actual copy is good..again all subjective...basically quality content is purely in the eyes of the beholder & based on personal opinion....The judge & jury, whether right or wrong is the search engines algorithmn and what you see in the SERPs.

Google maybe the search engine of today, but will it be tomorrow?...What i am suggesting is plan accordingly & for eventualities also.

BTW doesn't Espotting backfill get supplied from Mirago?

I am not having a rant, just trying to ascertain whether the focus of the conversation is the disapproval of sites with sponsored results appearing on them or that fact that search engines like Google index them?

[Mogga]

I guess I'm pointing out that things aren't clear cut and what some affiliates see as good money actually stings other people.

IMO the sites which I'm complaining about add nothing to the internet.

Is there a role for the affiliate association to play in this?
Should affiliate marketing be used in this way?
Is the affiliate association all about money?


yes some of this is google's fault but it seems to be doing it repeatedly as sites find cracks in its system.

Its a bit like spyware - spyware steal the affiliate commission by diverting the user at the last minute. These insidious sites steal traffic a bit further back up the line that's all.
Why do we complain about spyware? They've done their bit - written or piggybacked onto a bit of software onto someone's pc with permission - in the same way these sites are given licence to use data from espots.etc and have written a bit of code to produce a huge site out of that.

Will membership of the affiliate association have a members register of interests? Saying what people are? Whether they're merchants, networks, affiliates, media agencies, espot affiliates, ppc affiliates etc etc?

[drivetowin]

The affiliate association is certainly not all about money it is more about establishing a better fairer more educated environment for us all to work in.

I think QGJ has raised some very valid points though - site quality is/will always be subjective - can we all hand on heart say every one of our sites adds real value to the average Internet user?

I dont really think you can draw a comparison between sites using any sort of search engine results to fill space (and earn revenue) and spyware. Spyware is acting without the users consent - the user is willingly clicking in Google or elsewhere to visit the page full of espotting results.

I also dont see why you think that removing your sites from espotting results would solve your problem - presumably the site that is ranking above yours (the one containing the espotting results) would still be above yours, only now you wouldnt even stand a chance of any incremental traffic from people clicking through on your link in the espotting results on that page. That said - I've looked at the example you have hinted at and can see why you feel agreived. But it can work positively too - I have had lots of my sites content featured by 'wales' too - and on a couple of sites which have been dropped from Google in one of their updates - I still receive traffic indirectly via 'wales' because for certain search terms 'wales' ranks in the top 5 results, and my site is the no2 result on the page 'wales' displays - so it is not a clear cut case of black and white.

Should affiliate marketing be used in this way? - yes I believe it should (I hasten to add that for this paragraph this is my personal view - I believe the question is a valid one for the association to formulate an answer on once it is in existance) - used responsibly integrated ppc search results are a valid way of making income from a site.

[Barry]

I think the best way forward in this would to make it a requirement for all thes companies to supply their dat and results in javascript only - similar to google adsense but maybe you could feed the javascript some search variable .

That way the results would not be included in the results of any big search engine cache.

It would also make it the job of the webmaster to at least create a bit of static and unique content for the page - only using results as backfill (non indexable)

[Barry]

And whats more Mogga I know exactly what you're going through - infact I would think that the majority of people on this forum are in the same boat (I know their are the few that differ! - make yourselfs heard).

I think any member of a future 'affliate union' would I hope be disauded from using techniques to make maney like this and maybe even kicked out.

I've made a few search portals using mirago, I must say and still have a few going - only make pence off them - infact only been arsed to invoice them once - good know how much they owe me now I'll have to log in(another downfall - of my accounting and the fact they don't auto invoice!) -- but I refrain from producing these sites four of five time a month - because i I find them sidering my own other sites that do have unique content and I have put reall effort into and ranking higher in google for my keywords!

And mogga you should technically be able to ban any robot u like from your site , but you'll have to wait for somebody else to answer it more specifically as I am not sure.

Nice one

[Lee_Owen]

I find espotting feeds absolutely disgusting. I can see what people mean by scraper sites now, filth! Is there a way of banning their bot? or even smacking it!

[loquax]

Is there a way of banning their bot?

Do espotting have a bot?

If their backfill is from another search engine then the bot would be that search engines?

And it's not unknown for others to spider sites to obtain keywords/phrases to use within a search site - so you'd need to know those bots too.

All in all not just a case of banning an espot bot, if they have one.

Jason

[watcher]

If an affiliate association is going to get into the realms of what constitutes a quality site then the association is going to be (dangerously) flawed from the start. You'll end up with members vying for control with the sole intent of hampering their competiton - doing so by hiding behind subjective arguments. Collectives can quite easily become a body of corruption - especially if it wields any sort power - even if at conception the intentions are good. DMOZ is a case in point.

That isn't to say I like those Espot/Overture only reskins or their scraper brethren - I don't (particularly those that promote themselves as comparison sites but compare nothing). However, there are plenty of static, non-scraper sites that provide little or no value and are simply place holders for keywords - pseudo content that is nothing more than reworked cover blurb.

On the other hand there are plenty of affiliate sites that provide a useful service to end users and monetise their traffic using PPC feeds - without which the service could not exist.

Let the search engines decide what sites are relevant to what a user is looking for and which sites are "faking" it with near duplicate content. In this respect I think that Google is making excellent progress. I know that point of view is likely to be very unpopular on this forum - but I try to look at things objectively.

As a webmaster I'm finding Google as hard as any here - as a user I'm finding what I'm looking for faster than ever. Google is really getting on top of scraper sites and the Espot/Overture only sites. A couple of months ago Findspot and Multicrawl were over the results like a rash - now I rarely come across them. Looking at Alexa confirms this. Certainly others have sprung up but not with such prevalence and Google will undoubtedly get on top of them.

It isn't just the scraper sites that Google has sussed. I see many, many dynamic sites, whose sole purpose was to inject as many (PPC carrying) pages as possible into Google getting hit with URL only listings, demotion to the Supplemental Index and generally lower rankings.

For more and more commercial searches I see the actual merchants occupying more and more of the top slots - on many occasions the first page consisting entirely of merchants. Directory/Shopping Mall type sites - auto generated or static - feature less and less with each Google update. Google seems ever more about "real" destinations as opposed to sites simply trying to get into the click stream - an intenton they've made clear on numerous occasions. Yahoo and MSN are worlds away from Google results and if they really want to mount a serious challenge to Google they too will have to take this destination driven approach.

I will admit that I am always highly suspicious of any formalised collectives - I think they can all too easily promote favouritism, nepitism and the old boy network - the very things that encourage people to look beyond the workplace and (perhaps) into AM with a more peer-to-peer laissez faire approach.

Helping affiliates and would-be affiliates build sites that offer real services and value - those "destination" types sites - would be worthwhile. An association that is all about bullying (or otherwise coercing) others to stop building certain types of sites would be a very bad idea.

But offering help and advice and providing a voice for affiliate marketing is something that this forum itself already achieves - so why the need for an association ? Unless there is an, as yet unspoken, idea that such a body would have legally binding powers.

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Read with interest

However I am off to buy a dog and I will register his name if I have to as E-Spot Bot? (Kind of like Eee By eck luv, or Eee bay reversals) but with an affiliate twist on it and before you ask I do have a friend with a dog called Eee By Eck Luv, which sounds very funny almost everytime when he calls the dogs name out whilst down the local park if not a touch embarrasing.

Tiger